Emerging pathways for critical futures research: Changing contexts and impacts of social theory

The paper traces the changing contexts for futures research over the past 25 years. It argues that futures research needs to be viewed as part of the re-politicisation - in the Habermasian sense - of technocratic decision-making. It suggests that there are three particular reasons for revisiting the need for criticality in futures research: the increasing acknowledgement of systemic interrelatedness (ecological, social, economic), a growth in the forward-looking socio-economic paradigm that permeates both business and policy, and the challenge of theory development. Drawing on social theory and futures research, we suggest three pathways for revived critical futures research: socio-technical practices, future-oriented dialectics, and socio-economic imaginaries. As a result, the paper calls for development in futures studies that would dialectically integrate and overcome the dichotomy between instrumentalisation and (critical) theorising that can be currently understood as somewhat antagonistic. In order to find a balance between these antagonistic dimensions, futures research should be more engaged in enabling critique and revealing assumptions and interests.